Is It Perpetual Motion?

In “The Perpetual Search for Perpetual Motion” (Summer 1986) Ken Alder provides an amusing look at inventors who thought their machines could defy the laws of nature. I was troubled, however, by the curt treatment of Joseph Newman’s recent invention. Alder seems to have applied the same a priori reasoning in dismissing Newman’s invention as has the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

History supports the contention that monumental technological breakthroughs often force the reexamination of currently accepted natural “laws.” Newman’s engine or any other invention should not be dismissed simply because it challenges presently accepted physical laws. If Newman can force us to reevaluate our understanding of physical phenomena, then he has made a valuable contribution to science. If not, his folly will be duly recorded, as Alder has so ably demonstrated.

Editor’s note: Joseph Newman, of Lucedale, Mississippi, claims that his “energy machine” creates energy through a heretofore unknown unification of the gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear fields, and that if patented it “will replace all present forms of energy generation.” The Patent Office has dismissed it as a perpetual-motion machine. After several years of litigation, it was finally put to the test, under a court order, last spring. A physicist and two electrical engineers from the National Bureau of Standards employed a variety of common tests and found that basically the machine converts DC energy—from 116 nine-volt batteries—to AC. It does so at 27 to 67 percent efficiency, a far lower rate than several machines already on the market, and it never approaches efficiency of 100 percent or more, as its inventor had claimed. Newman says the test results are part of “a conspiracy against me,” and he has indicated that he plans to seek a court order to have the test equipment tested.